Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
I still hold. . .that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary.… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these? — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek. — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image